As we approach the end of 2022, we all face tough times ahead.
The global energy and cost of living crisis is affecting us all and at Essex we have been working tirelessly with our Students’ Union to create a package of support for our students and staff to help them through the difficult months ahead.
It is at times like this that our partnerships are more important than ever to help us achieve our ambitious goals.
Over the last decade, we have recognised that growth is essential to ensure the subjects and disciplines we cover have critical mass. We now have over 18,000 students, 858 researchers (an increase of 4.4% on the previous year), 1,132 academic staff and 1,420 professional services staff.
It is wonderful that we have grown, but I am equally pleased that our values remain the same: our equal commitment to education and research; our commitment to internationalism; our focus on recruiting students on the basis of potential as well as prior achievement; and the power of education to transform lives.
Maintaining our relationship with universities in Europe remains critical to achieving our global ambition to be recognised for research and education excellence.
We are proud to be a founding member of YERUN and are keen to continue our role as a valued partner, supporting its ongoing focus on a wide range of research-related initiatives such as supporting researcher development, open science and research mobility.
We were also delighted that Silvia Gomez Recio, the General Secretary of the YERUN network, was able to join our Annual Meeting and Summer Reception celebration earlier this year. We were also extremely pleased to host the LINK EDU_RES summer school with our YERUN colleagues in August, which provided a fantastic opportunity for our colleagues and PhD students from across Europe to work together and further the aims of the network.
In this new post-Brexit world, our goal is to make our trailblazing European partnerships and collaborations stronger and closer than ever.
Along with our Young Universities for the Future of Europe (YUFE) partnership, YERUN is a key part of our strategy to maintain the richness and diversity of our student and staff body,offering exciting opportunities for research collaboration and student mobility. It is core to our identity that at Essex you can find the world in one place.
As we look ahead to 2023, we are proud at Essex to be a truly global university with exceptionally strong links to Europe thanks to our international community of students and academics.
With YERUN partners we are looking forward to forging ahead – to innovate and build even stronger international networks in Europe.
Professor Anthony Forster
Vice-Chancellor, University of Essex
